Multivocal Monday

multivocal ~ having many meanings

Wow, summer didn’t just return, it returned with a vengeance! We’ve had heat warnings in effect for the last several days and we’re not out of the woods yet. But the weather network swears it’ll cool again by the weekend, and you know we can all trust the weather network.

No progress to report on the great office switcheroo. I did go back to Primitive Designs to look at knobs for the desk, but the ones I really liked they only had three of and I need at least six of them. Eight would be better. But they’re supposed to be getting more in this week so I’ll try again on the weekend.

Meanwhile, there’s still a lot of work to be done in the room itself before it can become my office. Specifically, I need to re-home the kitty litter pan. It sits right in front of the closet door, which is unhandy to begin with, and when one of the cats decides to drop a stink bomb in it, it can become lethal.

Smell aside, it would be nice to have easier access to that closet. It’s small, but deep, and although I have a lot of art supplies in there, there’s still lots of room for storage. I’ve got some plastic file boxes with old/little used files in them. And maybe I could even find room for some of the craft closet overflow. My idea is to have the craft closet for fabric and yarn crafts only, and all other crafts could go in the “art” closet. Guess I’ll have to wait and see how much room I have when I can actually get into the art closet.

I made another pass at the bookcase we want to get rid of, and found two more boxes of books to get rid of. Imagine, me getting rid of books! This time I took them to a used bookstore the next town over where I earned $15 in store credit ... which I turned around and spent $12 of on books for the grandbaby. LOL

Saturday night I participated in a somewhat unusual event. I’m sure most people have been invited to a high school or college reunion at one time or another, but how many of you have ever been to a grade school reunion? Here’s the original class picture:

You can click on it to make it bigger. And here are the 15 of us who were able to make it, plus our teacher:

15 out of a class of 36 is not bad, considering how much time has gone by. There were a few others that would have liked to make it, but either had distance issues or other commitments. Maybe next time guys. ;-) The organizers - Anne Reyns, David Cromlish, and Jane Barlow-Carrie - did an amazing job of tracking people down.

It was great to see everyone and catch up. A few people were easy to recognize but a few took some serious guesswork and many hints. And man, did the stories flow fast and furious, everyone had at least one. The more we talked, the more we remembered. I think it’s safe to say a good time was had by all.

I only thought to exchange e-mails with one of my old friends and silly me, I have a whole box of business cards sitting on my desk and do you think I remembered to bring any of them? Of course not!

Now that we’ve all connected, I’m sure it’ll be easier to stay in touch. I’ve already found five of my old friends on Facebook and I’m sure more will follow. Not everyone has Facebook though, so staying in touch might be tricky. But I’m confident we’ll manage somehow.

You know, sometimes the most pleasant walk of all is one down memory lane.

Mortalism Monday

mortalism ~ belief that the soul is mortal

It was a quiet week last week ...

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*cue crickets chirping*

"How quiet was it?"

It was so quiet that I'm sitting here, Sunday night, trying to think of something to talk about and I've got nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

See, here's the thing. I have Type II Diabetes and I'm in the process of changing to a new medication. But apparently first I need the old medication totally out of my system. So while this is going on my glucose levels have been steadily rising and among other things it's making me incredibly tired.

Fortunately I'll be on the new medication by the end of the week, but in the meantime I've been suffering from tiredness of epic proportions which makes it hard to get anything done. So I've been pretty much doing only what's necessary the last couple of weeks, no time for extras.

The weather has finally become more summer-like, we even had the air conditioner going on the weekend. The hubby's been in the pool almost every night - despite the fact the warmest the water's been is 74 F.

***more thinking***trying not to pull a brain muscle here***

Okay, here's what a dust bowl my brain is right now. I just asked hubby's advice on what I should write about in this post. His reply: Talk about your fractured fairy tales. Good idea!

Saturday I had my first solo flight at babysitting the grandbaby. This girl loves to be talked to and I thought what better way than to tell her a story. So rather than go down to her room and get one of her many books, I decided to just tell her a story or two. I'm a writer, right? How hard could it be to tell her one of the fairy tales I learned as a child.

Pretty hard, as it turns out.

I started out with Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and a more convoluted, politically incorrect tale you would have never heard. I had to keep back tracking to add details and I cast aspersions on Goldilock's character in general. And also, the bears weren't all that bright if they went for a walk leaving their front door unlocked.

Then I tried Cinderella. Everyone one loves Cinderella, right? Well, her step family didn't love her. Apparently I didn't either. My version of the story was some kind of weird amalgamation of the Disney version and the Grimm's version. Not as much back tracking but I did question the prince's intelligence, if not his eyesight, if he couldn't tell Cinderella was his true love without her foot fitting into the glass slipper. And think of the blisters a shoe made of glass would give you!

One of the granddaughter's favorite toys these days is a frog, so I finished up with a rendition of the Frog Prince. Or is that Princess? I got the princess playing with her golden ball right, but she lost it down a well instead of a fountain. And then I was kind of sketchy on the deal she made with the frog. I remembered the king forcing his daughter to honour her side of the bargain, and I remembered she was really mean to the poor frog, and then I kind of skipped ahead to him turning back into a prince although I pointed out there was no way these two ended up married because first, she was really mean and broke her word, and second, she must have been a little girl (playing with her ball) which would have made it just plain creepy.

My poor granddaughter is going to be scarred for life by the time I get done with her. :-D

Mnemonist Monday

mnemonist ~ one from whose memory nothing is erased

Last week I did something I haven't done for ages - I picked up a paint brush and painted a picture. It wasn't a very good picture, but it helped me remember how much I used to love to paint. It was very relaxing too. So I decided that it was something I should try and make time for more often, and I've designated Sunday mornings as my "art time."

And no, I'm not going to post a picture of my painting here. There were a couple of parts that were okay, but for the most part it really wasn't good. What I'll do is turn the sheet over and do a different painting next week. Water colour paper is too expensive to waste. ;-)

Instead, I'm going to show you a picture of my messy cat(s).

This picture was taken last evening. After the mess had already been picked up earlier for vacuuming. They really do like to have their favourite toys where they can see them. Taz is quite proud of his tissue paper nest, and he quite likes pink. Every once in awhile I'll spirit away a few of the really shredded pieces (but only when he's not looking) and replace it with a couple of new sheets. And they all love to burrow through the tissue paper to find a toy. Now, if I could only train them to put the toys back in the basket when they're done.

Last week a friend and I went on our monthly thrift store run. Pickings were a little on the slim side - a pair of black jeans to replace a pair I'd worn out, a couple of books, and a tea mug. I read one of the books yesterday - Incantation by Alice Hoffman, and quite enjoyed it.

Then Saturday was the annual book sale at Saint Peter's Church. This is an event my daughter and I look forward to every year and we were lined up with a handful of other bibliophiles at 8:30 a.m. waiting for the doors to open at 9.

While we did pick up a few books, we showed a great deal more restraint than in previous years. This was due in part to the sheer number of books we each possess. Good thing we don't live under the same roof anymore. And it was also due to the over-pricing of the collectible books this year - very disappointing considering the poor shape the books were in.

The edits of Lucky Dog are going well. I'm at the halfway point and I think if I stay away from the games and stop futzing around so much, there's no reason I can't get this round of edits done this week and hopefully send it off to my betas on the weekend.

I finally got around to updating my writing blog. If you missed the post you can find it HERE. One of the things I did was change things around on the sidebar on the right a bit. I have a place for what I'm currently editing as well as novels waiting for edits. It would be nice if I could find a way to have the editing bars reflect the work I've done editing, but I haven't quite figured that one out yet.

And look! Count 'em - the orchid has four blossoms now.

And call me crazy, but I think I'm going to have two more open this week. Awesome sauce! :-)

Mantic Monday

mantic of, like or pertaining to divination; prophetic; divinely inspired

My normal routine is to figure out my weekly goals while watching True Blood on Sunday nights. It occurred to me during the week that I might be better served by figuring out the coming week’s goals on Friday night, while watching Stargate Universe, leaving me free to get a jump start on my posts over the weekend.

*sigh* It was good in theory. In practice I was too busy sweating over my entry for the Behind the Headlines Blogfest to worry about my goals. My story was much more difficult than I’d first envisioned, and I didn’t get the actual post up until Saturday (you can read it here if you care to.)

I also spent part of Saturday downloading a trial version of Office 2007 (it took several tries). This buys me a couple of months to save up for a copy of my own, and in the meantime I was able to get some work done on both Saturday and Sunday.

I met all my blogging goals last week, although I fell a bit behind on my blog reading and commenting. And this was despite going to a Scribe’s meeting one night and the movies another night. I just wish I’d managed to get some other writing or editing in as well. This was one of the reasons I started thinking about working on goals at the beginning instead of the end of the weekend. Oh well, maybe next week.

This Week:
Tuesday: Part XI of the Fortune Telling Series will be Pyromancy.
Wednesday: Will be going back to the cats and dogs for something humourous.
Thursday: The Passion for Poetry this week is the poetry form of the Quatern.
Friday: Chapter 35 of Space Opera. Just how much are things going to change between Chaney and Nekeisha? And where’s E.Z.?

Elsewhere in my week:

Other than having to drive to a nearby city tonight, my nights are pretty much free this week. Hopefully this will translate into more writing/editing time between blog posts. Why do I feel like I’m forgetting something? :-)

So, blogoverse, that’s what’s ahead in my week. How about you?